


we were in screaming colour

by blackberry_jam



Series: Soulmate AUs [3]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, canon typical language, one passing reference to underage drug use and drinking, slightly aged up characters, they're somewhere between 13-16
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:08:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27890527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackberry_jam/pseuds/blackberry_jam
Summary: The world is supposedly beautiful.If only Richie Tozier could see it.or, a soulmate au in which you cannot see colour until you have held your soulmates hand.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, The Losers Club (IT) - Relationship
Series: Soulmate AUs [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2003959
Comments: 2
Kudos: 73





	we were in screaming colour

**Author's Note:**

> haha not me disappearing for a month and then coming back with this and not a chapter of something i've already started!
> 
> i don't think there are any content warnings i need to tag, but if there's is let me know and i'll fix it up!

The sky is blue. It’s a darker shade when it’s raining, grey and moody when it’s cloudy, and blindingly bright while the sun shines. In the daytime, the sky stretches onwards, a sharp piercing blue to the very end of the horizon. During the night, it’s dotted with the bright lights of stars. The stars are various shades of white and yellow. 

The grass is green. It too changes shade from lawn to lawn, ranging from a wild green to a dark colour. In the summer, when the sun - yellow - has been beating down and the plants are water starved, they turn a withered brown.

The pot plant, with large flowers that nod their faces in the wind, that sits out on the porch is red. The flowers are a bright colour, with streaks of paler pink. The middles are yellow, bright yellow, and every winter they close up, falling onto the paved steps in a poetic sort of death.

His mother’s favourite dress is purple, or violet, as she calls it, and has a long skirt and pockets in the sides. The collar is lace - once a bright white and now faded to a creamy colour after years or wear and wash - and the short sleeves are frilled. His father teased her relentlessly, for the compliments she receives while wearing it and the way she always replies, “thanks! It has pockets!”

The school bus is a bright yellow, a mustard coloured yellow, not as bright as the sun but brighter than the colours of the standard two-bedroom houses on Kansas Street. The seats of the school bus are a patchwork of fabric, red and blue and white crossed over each other in an ugly plaid. The bus driver always wears a red cap.

The Barrens are every colour under the sun. The leaves on the trees are green, as with the lush grass, during the rainy seasons, and the moss that grows in the rocks by the quarry. The trunks of the trees are a deep brown and the rocks are just a little lighter. The tracks are red and rusted and the trains that rush over them are a mix of yellow and blue carts. The door to the clubhouse is mahogany, a reddish-brown, and the walls are the same colours as the trees. The hammock is blue, darker than the sky and lighter than the ocean, and the band and movie posters reflect all of the colours known to mankind (or womankind, if you ask Bev). 

The colours are beautiful.

If only Richie Tozier could see them. 

— — — —

Maggie Tozier, devoted mother who occasionally wished for a daughter, had met Wentworth Tozier, who was to be her soulmate and future husband, at the ripe old age of 14. Since their hands had met, the world had erupted into a colourful array for life.

One rainy afternoon, many years later, Maggie Tozier had dragged Richie through the hardware store, looking at all the small square coloured cards, displaying all the paint colours you could buy. They all looked the same to Richie. A sea of black and white.

She had pointed at all the rows, labeling them as she went. Blue, sky. Green, grass. Red, strawberries. Orange, Mrs S.’s car. Yellow, sun. Black, night sky. White, snow. Richie had shrugged, before non-committedly selecting one of the colours she had referred to as ‘white’. Off-white, Maggie had remarked as she flicked through the cards before selecting one and marching him to the front desk to cart the tins of paint back to the car, nice choice.

By the end of the weekend, Richie Tozier’s bedroom walls were off-white. His parents had spent the whole two days they got off work slaving away at it, so he didn’t have the heart to tell them he honestly couldn’t see the difference between it and whatever the previous colour had been.

— — — —

The radio in Richie’s bedroom is made of chrome. This means it’s silver and shiny, reflecting the images of his room into a small warped view. It sits atop the dresser, though most of his clothes live on the floor in healed piles, rock music drifting softly through the speakers in the background. 

“What colour is the lampshade?” Richie asked, half-heartedly. He and Bev were stretched out on the floor, legs pressed against each other in the small space between the foot of the bed and the wall. Bev’s met her soulmate and it’s brilliant for two reasons;

1\. Her soulmate is Ben! When Richie first met Ben, and consequently Bev, after an unfortunate run in with Henry Fuckin’ Bowers, he only had to take one look at the purely smitten look on his face to know that he had the hots for her.   
2\. She can see the colours! This makes it perfect for afternoons like this, where they get a little bit high and spread themselves out somewhere, and Bev takes it upon herself to point out every colour of everything. He hasn’t ever gotten sick of it - he doesn't think he’ll ever get sick of colour.

Bev rolls over on her side to peer at it. “Pale blue.” She says, matter-of-factly.

Blue. Sky. “Lighter or darker than the sky?” He asks.

Bev thinks about it for a moment. “Lighter.”

Richie nods, and they fall back into a comfortable silence.

“The bedspread is yellow,” Bev continues. “Like the little flowers that grow around the power pole on the corner of Main Street and Witcham. It’s pale yellow, lighter than the sun and the school bus and softer than the way that the light slants through the cracks in the clubhouse roof. The stripes are white, like crisp snow and the colour of the handlebars on Mike’s bike, before they faded and cracked.”

Her voice is soft and soothing, and he always feels tired after a lazy afternoon. Just before he closes his eyes and drifts off into the endless world of sleep and colourless dreams, he has one last coherent thought. Richie thinks he might’ve been able to fall in love with Bev, if the universe worked that way.

— — — —

The summer holidays are like the holy grail of high school. Six to eight blissful weeks to muck around the streets of the shithole that is Derry. Plenty of time to catch shitty horror flicks at the Aladdin or beat everyone to a pulp at Street Fighter at the arcade. Enough time to eat melting ice cream on the corner and help out at Mike’s grandfather's farm. Weeks and weeks stretched out to get high and drunk with Bev, to ride up and down the roads on his too small bike, because Bill still loves it. Days perfect for annoying Eddie and lightly teasing Ben for his New Kids on the Block obsession and odd fascination with morbid history. Seemingly endless time to argue with Stan and swim at the quarry and waste days in the Barrens, fighting with Eddie over the hammock or harassing Ben and Bev as they go about their interests, architecture and sewing respectively (with just enough time left to tease them about the whole soulmates deal). Plenty of time to not worry about school work or the ex-Bowers gang (now that Bowers himself is locked up at Juniper Hill) or worry about That Summer or the colours.

Richie Tozier loves summer.

The clubhouse gets hot in summer, but if they leave the trapdoor open to let the breeze in, it’s bearable. And even though it gets almost unbearably hot in summer, he’ll still spend over his fair share of time in the hammock, because he knows that no matter the temperature, Eddie will still shove himself into the space (a space that dwindles more and more as the years go on) at the end of the hammock and kick at his head with his socked feet after ten minutes. Even though Ben actually brought the hammock, after he found it in the basement of his house, no one else ever gets a turn in it. By now it’s just habit, the hammock is a richieeddie thing.

On this particular summer day, five minutes after Eddie has clambered into the hammock beside him and Richie has complained enough, even though they all know that neither of them are going to move, Bill, sitting perched on the ladder in the breeze, declares;

“It’s hot as fuck, let’s go to the quarry.”

“That’s what Eddie’s mum said last night.” Richie interjects, quickly.

“That doesn’t even make sense, asshole.” Eddie snaps, accompanied with a kick. 

“Oh, sorry. She said,” Richie continues, lifting his voice a couple of pitches to squeak, “‘you’re hot as fuck’.”

“No, actually,” Eddie snaps back, “if you were anywhere near my mum she’d say, ‘what the fuck are you doing in my house, stay the hell away from my son.’”

Bev coughed out something that might have been a laugh, and Richie turned around to glare at her. Ben seized the gap in conversation. “The quarry sounds good, Bill.”

Once the decision has been made for them they all start to collect their things together, standing up and brushing the dirt from their clothes. Eddie and Richie argue the whole way to the quarry.

— — — —

Bev has always been stronger and braver than any of them, and today isn’t any different. She starts peeling off her shirt half way there, and as they reach the quarry she steps out of her shorts, tosses the clothes - red shirt, green shorts, she declared, earlier - into a pile and runs to the edge of the cliff. In a blink of an eye, she’s gone, falling gracefully to the cool water - blue - without so much as a shout. Bill’s next, kicking off his shoes and shucking his shirt off before leaping after her. They follow in quick succession, Mike and then Ben, until it’s just Richie and Eddie and Stan remaining, peering down at them. 

Stan takes longer to get to the water, carefully removing his shirt and shorts before folding them up and placing them in a neat pile. He takes an extra long time, un-tying his shoelaces before placing the shoes neatly beside his other clothes. Then he’s off, throwing himself down to the chilly lake.

Richie, who’s practically been ready to get in the water since he woke up this morning, waits longer. Still involved in a conversation slash argument with Eddie’s that he is definitely not flaking out on, he waits (not so patiently) while Eddie sorts out all of his things. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, he groans, as Eddie moves over to Bev’s pile of clothes, laying discarded on the dirty ground, and picks at them, before picking up the shirt and folding it in half.

“Eddie! Come on! Let’s go!” 

Eddie snaps something back that might be a complaint, or an insult, but Richie is sick of it. He marches over, and grabs his arm, yanking to him his feet and dragging him to the edge of the cliff.

Eddie shouts the whole time, trying to wrench his arm out of Richie’s grip, but Richie just rolls his eyes and holds tighter. As they reach the edge, Richie lowers his grip, one hand pinning his glasses to his face, and grabs onto Eddie’s hand instead with the other hand.

As they leap, the world explodes into colour.

The sky is blue! It’s a magnificent colour, and it’s bright and clear. The lampshade in his room is pale blue, Bev said, and he can imagine it now. The clouds in the sky are white and fluffy. White like snow and, suddenly, Richie can’t wait for winter. The quarry itself is grey and brown, he remembers Bev blathering about it one afternoon as they lay in the sun, and he doesn’t think anything has ever been as beautiful. Except for maybe the water itself. The water is blue, too, and Richie thinks they might be his favourite colour, but it’s different to the blue of the sky. It’s clearer, and looks green-ish. The green is nice too, the trees lining the quarry are flourishing and everything looks so alive. The few seconds they fall through the air are the best of his life.

It’s not until they hit the water, and Eddie peels his hand away as they surface for breath and stare at each other, that Richie realises the gravity (no pun intended) of the situation. Eddie Kasprak is his soulmate. His fucking soulmate!

Eddie’s hair is brown, nicer than the brown of the quarry and the trees, and his eyes are similarly so. And his freckles! In the next second, he thinks that brown might be his favourite colour.

“Fuck.” Richie murmurs, running a hand through his hair and pushing his glasses further up his nose. “Fuck.”

“Fuck,” Eddie repeats, nodding fervently. “Can you— can you see it?”

“Yes, yes! Fuck, yes.” Richie says, and he’s breathless. “It’s so… it’s beautiful.”

Beautiful isn’t a strong enough word for what he feels right now, in this second, the chill of the air against his wet skin, the world a blinding bright explosion of colour.

Eddie opens his mouth to say something, but he’s interrupted by Mike, shouting over at them.

“What are you guys doing over there?”

“Just… just hang on!” Eddie shouts back, turning towards them, before snapping his attention back to Richie. “What do we do now?”

Richie turns toward the others and shouts over. “Hey, Bev, what colour is your bra?”

“Purple, you fucking pervert!” Bev’s answer is snappy and said with laughter.

“Purple’s pretty!” Richie screams back, and everything goes deathly quiet for a few blissful moments before everyone erupts in screams, shouting over the top of each other. The rest of the Loser’s Club starts to swim towards them, and Richie turns back to Eddie, poking one finger out and tapping the tip of his nose. “How hot will your mum look in colour?”

Eddie splashes him with the lake water, blue as a collective clear in small amounts, and Richie feels like he could live forever.

**Author's Note:**

> title from 'out of the woods' by taylor swift.
> 
> i’m on tumblr - @blackberryjqm


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